


As the Crow Flies

by octoberburns



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crows, Gen, Magical Realism, Spirit Work, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 09:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberburns/pseuds/octoberburns
Summary: Adi had their reasons for stopping spirit work, but when Dione's little girl goes missing, they can't turn her down: they owe them both. Fortunately, the crows are along to help. There are lessons Adi hasn't learned yet, and things they'll need to confront if they want to bring Saffron home safely...





	As the Crow Flies

**Author's Note:**

> To my father, who asked me to soar.

“I don’t see what the point is if I can’t eat them,” Cricket said.

Adi sat back on their heels, wiping the sweat from their hairline with the side of their forearm. The summer heat was beating down on their backyard, filling the air with the rich sweltering green scent of sun and plants. Adi, dressed as always in loose-fitting black, was baking as much as the garden, but they didn’t mind; it certainly didn’t keep them from their beloved herbs. Undaunted by the heat, the crows were out in force as well, poking around in the garden or chasing each other in and out of the apple tree.

“You know very well what they’re for, Cricket,” Adi said. “Don’t give me that. You’ve helped me use most of them.”

Cricket clicked his beak together, a disapproving sound. “Yes, and I said it was silly. Why use a stupid plant to unlock the gate? You could just fly over the fence.”

Adi had stopped trying to make sense of the way crows talked about gates and fences years ago. “We can’t all be crows,” they said fondly. “Go on, there are some cherry tomatoes coming in. You can take a couple.”

With a pleased fluff of his feathers, Cricket said, “Raucous says she doesn’t understand why I like you so much. I’ll tell her it’s because you give me tomatoes.”

Adi laughed. He hopped off to the other side of the garden as they watched, pausing on the way to yank Bottlecap’s tail. She whirled on him, but he had already leapt into flight, letting out a cackling caw. Bottlecap squawked at him, then returned to bickering with Shrill over a piece of mica she’d found in the dirt. Shaking their head, Adi went back to clipping herbs.

They bundled each one up with hemp twine, laying them out in neat rows and mentally listing off their uses as they worked: yarrow, for breaking enchantments; agrimony, for banishing; angelica, for visions; chamomile, for sleep; wolfsbane, for protection; catnip, for happiness; lavender, for purification; thyme, for courage; mugwort, for—

Briefly they faltered, the clippers pausing on the stalk—and then they sighed and finished the motion, laying the last herb down with the rest. It had been months since they’d had use for mugwort, but something in them still rebelled at setting it aside entirely. It was a habit they hadn’t yet been able to break.

There was a sudden swell of cawing from the crows, and then a voice called, “Adi? Are you home?”

“In the back, Jill!” Adi yelled back, getting to their feet and brushing the dirt from their knees. Jill appeared at their side gate a moment later, letting herself in and swinging it closed behind her. She was a petite, dark-skinned brunette with hair that fell in sheets to her waist; today it was swept back from her face with a wide headband that matched the sunny yellows and greens of her dress. It was a cheerful garment—one entirely at odds with the grim expression on her face.

“Oh, no,” Adi said. “What’s wrong?”

Relief flashed across Jill’s face, but just as quickly it was gone. “Can we talk?” she said, tipping her head towards Adi’s back door. “I need your help.”

“Yes, of course, just a second,” Adi said, stripping off their gloves and gathering up the herbs they had laid out on the grass. The crows were still making a racket. That could simply have been down to the presence of someone they weren’t friends with, but Adi didn’t think so. They had learned to read their moods in the last few years; this was something different.

Well. That boded well for the rest of their afternoon.

They went inside—Jill slipping off her flats, Adi brushing the dirt from their feet—and made their way into the kitchen. Wordlessly Jill took a seat at the island; Adi hung their bundled herbs up to dry and opened the window for the crows. Three of them immediately settled on the sill, rolling their beady eyes in Jill’s direction: Cricket, who followed Adi everywhere; Junegrass, and—that was Raucous, the boss of the local flock. Any hope Adi had been harbouring of a simple solution to Jill’s problem evaporated immediately.

“Okay,” Adi said. “What’s going on?”

Jill looked down at her hands, which were twisted tightly together on the countertop. “I—I hate to ask this, Adi, I’m so sorry, but you know I wouldn’t come to you if it wasn’t an emergency.” She bit her lip, looking up, and took a deep breath. “I need a spirit worker.”

Adi stilled. “You know I can’t do that anymore, Jill,” they said finally. “After what happened to Dione—”

“No, no, I know, but that’s the thing,” Jill said. “It’s for Dione. She asked me to come. Please, Adi, she’s _desperate_.”

For a moment the world spun. It was only when Cricket let out a sharp caw and flapped his way into the room that Adi realized they had stopped breathing. They sucked in a shaky breath.

“Alright,” they said slowly, pulling out the stool next to Jill and sitting down. “If Dione asked for me—alright. Tell me everything.”

“It’s Saffron,” Jill said immediately. “Dione couldn’t wake her this morning. At first she thought she’d just been up late last night, but then she still wouldn’t wake, and—you know Dione’s not much of a witch, but she’s a decent diviner. Her cards say Saffron is… travelling.”

“Travelling,” Adi said, a sinking feeling in their stomach. “And Dione needs a spirit worker. Which means…”

“She thinks Saffron is trapped somewhere,” Jill said. “Please, Adi. You’re the only person we know who might be able to figure out where she’s gone.”

Adi sighed, rubbing their hand across their forehead. They didn’t do this kind of work anymore. But for Dione—for _Saffron_ —there was only one answer they could give. They owed them both. “Just let me get my things.”

That was simple enough: Adi kept a travel kit ready for exactly these sorts of house calls. It already had everything they’d need, at least for a relatively straightforward problem: the usual herbs, protective oils, salt, chalk, a chunk of quartz, their second best rune set, and a scattered handful of crow feathers. All they would need to add was—

Mugwort. Well, they still had a full tin in the back of their kitchen cupboard. In fact it was more than full: they’d stopped using it up, but they hadn’t stopped collecting. They had more mugwort than they could ever need again.

That knowledge was still an ache in their soul. They had been raised on spirit work, had learned the rituals and the techniques at their father’s knee and at their mother’s altar. Growing up they had spoken just as often with their ancestors as with their grandmother, who lived in Halifax and could be reached by an ordinary long distance phone call. To have lost something so fundamental, entirely through their own carelessness…

Well, at least what supplies they had left would do some good. If their final act as a spirit worker was to rescue Saffron, it would be well spent. Despite everything.

They chased the crows out of the kitchen and locked up, climbing into the passenger seat of Jill’s Subaru. They wound down the window as she started the car, and Cricket swooped out of the sky. He landed on their outstretched arm, haughtily settling his feathers.

“We’re coming,” he said. “After all, if you’re going to keep insisting on using those silly plants, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

“Thanks, Cricket,” Adi said.

“Useless fledgeling,” Cricket said fondly. Raucous bawled for him, and he took off. Adi put on their sunglasses, following his flight up into the bright blue glare of the sky. At least half the flock was clustered on the power lines or circling overhead, waiting for the car to leave.

“What did he say?” Jill said as she pulled out onto the road. “You know it’s weird how you talk to them, right?”

“They’re crows,” Adi said. “Being weird is their job. The flock is coming with us—Cricket seems to think I’ll need their help.”

“What kind of help can crows be?” Jill said skeptically. “They’re mischief-makers. They don’t do real magic, not like cats or bees.”

Adi tipped their head back against the headrest, closing their eyes and letting the ends of their straight black bob brush against their collar. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes a bit of mischief is exactly what you need.”

“I just hope it’s what Saffron needs,” Jill said.

“Yeah,” Adi said, “me too.”

* * *

Dione lived in a modest townhouse just west of Merivale. The apple tree in her postage-stamp front yard had been pruned into the shape of a protective sigil—Jill had done that, years ago—and wound with sparkling fairy lights that she kept up all year round. Jill pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, and in moments both the car and the tree were covered in crows.

Adi got out of the car slowly, shouldering their travel kit and brushing down the front of their tunic. “I don’t have dirt on my face, do I?”

“Oh, Adi, it’s fine,” Jill said, a touch of exasperation creeping into her voice. “You know Dione doesn’t blame you for what happened. And she’s a lot more worried about Saffron right now anyway.”

Cricket landed on Adi’s shoulder, sharp claws pricking gently against their skin. They lifted a hand to scratch the base of his throat, and walked up to the front door.

The doorbell had barely stopped echoing when Dione tore the door open. “Oh, thank god,” she said, and pulled Adi into a hug which startled Cricket into taking flight. “You came.”

Despite themselves there was a moment where Adi couldn’t help but return Dione’s embrace. Then they drew back, though they kept their hands on her shoulders, their eyes searching her face. Dione was a handsome woman, not quite as tall as Adi but much more solidly built, with a hooked nose, olive skin, and honey-blonde hair she kept cropped close to her skull. Right now, the laugh lines that marked her lips and eyes had disappeared entirely into worry and fear.

“Hi, Dione,” Adi said softly. “How’s Saffron?”

For a moment Dione sagged, but then she drew herself up and tugged them into the house. “There’s been no change,” she said, raising her voice for Jill’s benefit as she came up the front walk. “I moved her down to the living room. I thought it might be—safer. To have her at the centre of the house.”

“Good thinking,” Adi said. With Saffron absent from her own body, there was no telling what could force its way in through insufficient protections. It would be safer to keep the windows closed as well, for exactly that reason, so before Jill could shut the door Adi clicked their tongue for the crows. Cricket came swooping down immediately, followed by Junegrass and Glitter; the rest stayed on the tree outside, keeping watch. Adi let their companions settle on their shoulders, then turned to Dione. “Okay. Let’s see what I can do for her.”

Saffron was laid out on the couch, her cloud of golden hair vivid against the dark blue fabric. She resembled Dione in the bones of her face, though there was none of her mother’s solidity in her coltish twelve-year-old limbs. She looked oddly fragile in sleep, her usual vitality unnaturally stilled. She was still wearing her pyjamas.

Adi examined her swiftly, touching her body as little as possible—a turn of the elbow here, a bend of the hip there, a gentle press to the pulse at her wrist. As expected, there was nothing wrong with her, but she was so still; if not for her gentle breathing, and the slow heartbeat they had been able to find at last, Adi could have believed she was dead.

Dione was hovering nearby—an anxious counterpoint to the three crows, who had lined up solemnly along the arm of the couch. Adi sighed, removing their sunglasses and tucking the arm over the neckline of their tunic. “You couldn’t get anything useful out of your cards?” they said.

Dione shook her head. “Just that she was… somewhere else. That she can’t get back.”

“Okay,” Adi said. “I’ll trance, before we try anything more extreme. It could be that she just got lost and all she needs is someone to guide her home.” With the way the crows had been acting, they doubted it, but it was always better to try the simple solutions first. “Jill, can you boil a cup of water for me?”

Jill, who had been folded quietly in an armchair, immediately nodded and got to her feet. She was as familiar with the kitchen as Dione, and Adi rather suspected Dione wouldn’t want to let her daughter out of her sight.

“What can I do?” Dione said.

“Just stay with her,” Adi said, digging through their travel kit for pennyroyal and angelica. “Hold her hand. Stroke her hair. Give her something familiar to come back to.”

“Okay,” Dione said, sounding small and lost. She sat down on the couch, gently settling Saffron’s head on her lap, and cupped her daughter’s cheek with one hand. “She misses you, you know.”

Adi didn’t look up, setting the herbs and their tea strainer on the coffee table. “I’m sorry,” they said.

Dione let out a slow sigh. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” Adi said, “but I try to make a point of not lying to myself about magic.” They kept their eyes on their work, filling the strainer with pieces of angelica stalk and crumbling the pennyroyal leaves over them. “You may not blame me, but it was my fault.”

“Adi, come on,” Dione said. “They didn’t recognize you. That’s not your fault, it’s—”

“Dione. Please.” Adi lifted one graceful hand; Dione silenced immediately. Adi’s voice was remarkably even, with just a touch of flint at the edges. “I’d rather not talk about it,” they said. The crows shifted on their perch.

Dione nodded mutely, didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then Jill appeared in the doorway with a steaming mug. Adi stood, taking it from her, and slid the strainer into the water. “I’m not sure how long this will take,” they said, setting the steeping tea down on the table. “It could be a few minutes, or it could be much, much longer. It’s important that you not disturb me until I wake up on my own, or I could get stuck in the same place she is.”

“What do we do?” Jill said.

Adi shrugged. “Keep watch.” They sat on the couch, shifting Saffron’s feet and laying them down across their leg. The tea would need another couple of minutes.

They made sure they were settled comfortably, then let one hand rest on Saffron’s ankle. “Junegrass, please?”

The crow cawed a soft acknowledgement, landing gently on Adi’s hand with a sudden flurry of wings. She took a moment to balance herself, carefully curling her talons around Adi’s fingers, and then turned one beady eye on them. “Be cautious,” she said. “I don’t like where this one’s dreams are going.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Adi said. The tea was ready. They lifted the strainer from it and picked up the mug, swallowing as many mouthfuls as they could stand. “I’ll be back. Hopefully with Saffron.”

They closed their eyes, and let the world sink away into blackness.

* * *

They were standing in an endless field of buttery yellow grasses, a long, dizzying stretch out to infinity. Dark clouds massed on the horizon, boiling, boiling, growing closer and larger in a tumultous rush of abrupt jumps, like a jittery time lapse of a thunderstorm—

And there, there was Junegrass, darting through the sky in a crow’s searching pattern, and then Adi was soaring up into the sky, still skittering and jerking—

Or maybe falling—?

Falling, falling suddenly down into a yawning nothingness, the clouds opening up onto a void, an absence, red poppies and butterflies and the black, black maw of the earth, a thousand glittering glass reflections, jagged edges, sharp points, and there was a door, a door into nothing, nowhere, and nowhere left to go, and there was Saffron, just out of reach on the other side, her dandelion-gold hair a bright puff in the middle of a crowd of shimmering half-human shapes—

And Adi was falling, too fast, and there was no way to stop—

* * *

They slammed back into their body with a gasp.

Jill let out a brief shriek. All three of the crows startled into flight, Junegrass scoring an accidental line of blood across the back of Adi’s hand. Dione seemed to be trembling with suppressed tension, squeezing her daughter’s hand so hard that her knuckles were white.

The world was real. The world was real. Adi took a deep breath and fought their heartbeat under control.

Junegrass landed on the end of the couch between Cricket and Glitter, preening her feathers flat with offended dignity. “I hope you’re not so helpless a hatchling that you need me to explain that.”

Cricket gave a squawk. “Don’t be so rude, Junegrass.”

“We’re crows,” Glitter said scathingly. “It’s what we do.”

“Yes, and Adi is one of ours,” Cricket said, fluffing up his wings. “There’s no need for that.”

“No, Cricket, it’s fine,” Adi said. “Junegrass is right, it was obvious. I’d have to be newly hatched to have missed where Saffron is.”

“You found her?” Dione said, latching onto the one part of the conversation she could understand. “Where is she? What’s going on? Why won’t my daughter wake up, Adi?”

Adi took a deep breath. “Okay. Dione, I’m going to need you to stay calm. This is going to sound bad but I promise you, it’s not nearly as horrific as you’ll think. I can get her back. Alright?”

“This isn’t doing anything to convince me, Adi,” Dione said, a warning in her tone.

Adi winced. “Just—don’t freak out, okay?” They raised their eyes to hers. “She’s in the underworld. The land of the dead.”

For a moment there was only silence in the room, and then Dione said, “Adi, if you’re about to tell me my little girl is _dead_ —”

“She’s not! She’s not dead!” Adi said, raising their hands in protest. “She’s travelling. Just her mind—not her body or her spirit. My guess is she got tangled up with some ghosts in her dreams and they pulled her back down with them by accident. _I can get her back_. Okay? Breathe, Dione.”

Briefly Dione looked like she was going to argue, but then Jill came up beside her and squeezed her shoulder, and all the fight went out of her. She took a shuddering breath. “Okay,” she said at last. “Okay. Just tell me what I need to do.”

“First things first,” Adi said. “Let’s get her to my place. We need a witch’s wards for this kind of work. This is no longer a healing—this is a rescue mission. You understand?” Both Dione and Jill nodded, wide-eyed. “Pack everything you’ll need for an overnight stay. Go.”

They loaded their things into the trunk of Jill’s car, and Dione climbed into the backseat with Saffron curled in her lap. Adi watched her in the rearview mirror all the way back to their place. In the background of the reflection they could see the crows, travelling at speed. None of them were playfully swooping around, or circling lazily ahead when the car was stopped in traffic; they just followed, an eerily silent escort. Adi had known the flock for nearly five years now, and had never seen them like this.

Their little house was still baking under the August sun when Jill pulled into the driveway; Adi could hardly believe it had been barely two hours since they’d left. They hurried ahead while Dione climbed out of the car with her daughter, unlocking the door and ushering her and Jill inside. The crows swooped down without being called: Raucous, Junegrass, Bottlecap, Glitter, on and on, crow after crow following them into the house until at least two dozen had gone through the door.

Cricket was the last, settling in his favourite place on Adi’s shoulder. Adi lifted their hand, letting the familiar feeling of his feathers soothe their nerves, and looked out at the rest of the flock. They had filled the trees that surrounded the house, landed on the porch railings and the rain gutters, clustered in every bush. They still hadn’t made a sound.

“Keep watch,” Adi said. Shrill bawled an agreement.

The deadbolt slid home with a very final sound.

Dione and Jill had installed Saffron on the couch, and a line of crows was perched along its back, keeping their beady eyes attentively fixed on the girl. The rest had found perches on the bookshelf and the lampshades and the top of the TV. Adi dropped their travel kit onto a nearby armchair, then grabbed a folded blanket from the top of the bookshelf and handed it to Dione.

“Here. Tuck this in around her,” they said. “It has protection spells woven in, and it’ll keep her warm.”

“Where are you going?” Dione said, her eyes a little wild. She took the blanket.

“It’s okay,” Adi said. “I’m just going to check the wards. Jill—”

“I’ll stay with her,” Jill said immediately.

“Take anything you want from the kitchen,” Adi said, and disappeared into the back of the house.

All their wards were still well in place. Adi fed strength into the crystal that anchored the one over the back door, tidied and smoothed down the threads that ran the line of their upstairs windows, scattered salt on the tiny balcony that sat at the back wall of the master bedroom. All the while, Cricket stayed on their shoulder, combing his beak through their hair in a steady, comforting motion.

Adi paused in the landing on their way back down the stairs, leaning their head against the wall. They could hear Dione and Jill talking quietly in the living room, though they couldn’t make out the words, and all of a sudden they felt intensely weary.

“Come on, fledgeling,” Cricket said, his jocular tone doing little to cover his worry. “You’ve always got the answers, don’t you? So, what are you going to do this time?”

“I don’t know, Cricket,” Adi said. “I really don’t know.”

The crow tapped his beak disapprovingly. “You told the mother you could get her hatchling back. Are you saying you lied?”

“No! No,” Adi said, and scrubbed their hand over their face. “I just—this is a lot, Cricket. You know it is.” They sighed, straightening up, and started down the stairs again. “I think I’m going to need to talk to the ravens.”

“The ravens!” Cricket squawked, all of his feathers puffing up. “Those pompous, self-important old—”

“Yes, the ravens,” Adi said. “And you’re coming with me, so stop complaining. I need someone to translate.”

“I hate talking to ravens,” muttered Cricket, but he did settle a bit on their shoulder.

Dione looked up immediately when Adi walked back into the living room, all the restless energy in her frame tensing up. “Everything okay?” she said.

“Just fine,” Adi said, keeping their voice as gentle and even as they could. “You’re as safe as I can make you.”

Dione visibly relaxed at that, and Jill tried a smile. They had bundled Saffron up in the blanket; only her face was uncovered.

“Thank you,” Dione said. “You’re a strong witch, Adi, that—that means a lot.”

“What’s got you in such a state?” Raucous interrupted, fixing Cricket with a one-eyed stare.

Jill startled, jerking around to look at Raucous, and Dione looked somewhere between confused and offended to realize she had been interrupted by an animal. Adi sighed and resisted putting their head in their hands as Cricket once again puffed up with wounded dignity and squawked, “Adi’s going to talk to the ravens!”

There was a brief, shocked silence, and then every crow in the room started cawing at once.

Dione looked horrified. “What’s going on? Adi, what are they saying? Is Saffron—”

“Saffron’s fine!” Adi said, raising their voice to be heard over the cacophony of offended crows. “This is crow business. Shut up! All of you, shut up!”

Gradually the noise started to die off. Adi took a deep breath, counted to ten, and said, “Thank you. Now, I know you don’t get on with the ravens, but they’re responsible for guarding the door to the underworld, and they’re my best chance for getting Saffron back. Understand? No arguments.”

“You need to learn to stop looking for gates,” Junegrass said, but Adi fixed her with a glare and she subsided into inaudible muttering, hunching her shoulders and turning her head away.

“The ravens?” Jill said, perplexed and a little bit concerned. “Adi, what are you planning to do?”

“Nothing, for now,” Adi said. “I need to talk to them, that’s all. To see if they’re willing to help. If they allow me access to the underworld it’ll be much easier to get there—I don’t want to think of what kind of hoops I’ll have to jump through otherwise. Cricket’s coming with me to translate.”

“We’re all coming,” Raucous interrupted. “I won’t let our fledgeling go off to the ravens with only someone as silly as Cricket for help.”

Adi waited for Cricket to object to that, but he just tweaked their ear in agreement. They sighed again and managed to keep from rolling their eyes. “Okay, all of the crows are coming with me to translate. Actually—no, Raucous, leave a few of the flock here to keep an eye on Saffron. Junegrass is good at this stuff, let her stay with a couple others.”

Junegrass ruffled her feathers, mollified, and hopped down from the TV to perch on the arm of the couch by Saffron’s head. “I will make sure the hatchling is safe.”

“Thank you,” Adi said. They turned back to Dione. “Junegrass will keep an eye on Saffron. Try not to freak out too much, okay? I’ll be back soon. Hopefully with reinforcements.”

Raucous made an offended sound, but there was no more argument.

“Lock the door after me,” Adi said.

* * *

The Woodpark neighbourhood where Adi lived was well-suited to its name: it was full of old trees, and lots of them, plenty for the crows and the ravens both. The ravens kept to themselves for the most part, and Adi rarely saw them, though they had heard their croaking calls often enough. Their main roost was just a couple of blocks away, in one of the neighbourhood’s tallest trees. And so, with their sunglasses back on their face and Cricket still perched on their shoulder, they set off down the hill with their travel kit in hand. After a brief conference with the crows still guarding the house, Raucous and the others who had followed Adi outside swooped after them.

The afternoon heat was sweltering, and the neighbourhood was quiet but for the incessant buzzing of the junebugs and the distant sound of children shouting a street or two away. Adi stopped in front of the ravens’ tree in an uncharacteristically sombre atmosphere, tilting their head back to look up at the far-off branches. Around them, the crows settled silently in the shorter trees nearby.

“Well?” Cricket said from his place beside Adi’s ear. “Let’s get this over with.”

Adi dug in their bag, rooting around until they found a bundle of yew twigs. They tugged three from the twine and stowed the rest, then stooped to pluck a long-stemmed dandelion from the yard in front of them. Knotting the flower carefully around their selection of twigs, they called out, “Ravens! I need to speak with you!” and tossed it into the air.

A dark shape swooped out of the tree, faster than Adi would have thought possible, and caught the bundle in black claws.

There were three of them; the other two came fluttering down at a more sedate pace, and they lined up in a solemn row on a branch just above the level of Adi’s head. Adi, who spent so much of their time surrounded by crows, was always surprised to remember how large ravens were. Their long beaks and the shaggy ruff of feathers on their necks gave them a powerful air, lending a solidity to their grace that the lighter, nimbler crows lacked. These three especially had an aura of command, watching Adi intently with their black eyes.

The one who had caught their offering bundle let out a croak. Cricket made a disgusted sound, then repeated, “Why have you come to us, garden witch?”

“I need your help,” Adi said, pausing between sentences to let Cricket translate. “My friend’s daughter has the makings of a spirit worker, but she’s a fledgeling with no training. She was caught by her dreams last night. She won’t wake up.”

“And how is this our concern?” said the raven via Cricket.

“She has gone where the living weren’t meant to go,” Adi said. “I’m afraid she’s been drawn into your domain.”

All three of the ravens fluttered their wings at that, and one of them let out a low croak that sounded startled to Adi’s admittedly inexpert ear. They leaned their heads close together, conferencing in mutters for long moments, and then the one who seemed to be their spokesperson turned back to Adi and Cricket. “And what would you have us do?” they said. “We cannot fetch her out for you.”

“I’m a witch,” Adi said. “I can fetch her out myself. I just need you to open the way for me. Please.”

The ravens were silent, their heads cocked as if in consideration, and Adi stumbled under their strangely measuring eyes. “I have offerings I can make to you, and I’m willing to bargain,” they said. “Whatever you ask. Just, please. Help me. Help her.”

With a solemn dignity, the raven let out a short croak; on Adi’s shoulder Cricket bristled. “What do you mean, no, you pompous overstuffed windbag? Adi’s been respectful—”

“Cricket,” Adi said.

But Cricket wasn’t listening. The raven made a longer string of croaks, and he squawked indignantly, his claws tightening on Adi’s shoulder in his agitation. “And what’s that supposed to mean? Talk sense if you’re going to refuse, it was a very reasonable—no, don’t just repeat yourself, you pretentious old—fine! Fine!” he bawled, as the ravens flared their wings and took off as one, disappearing more completely into the upper reaches of the tree than Adi would have believed of birds their size. Cricket continued to call invective up at them long after they had vanished.

Adi felt numb. The ravens had been their best shot at getting Saffron back, and if they had refused to help—

No. They refused to think like that. There had to be a way to reach into the underworld on their own. There had to be some ghost or spirit who still looked on them favourably, who could help them draw her out of wherever she’d been caught. There had to be.

Cricket was still muttering angrily in their ear. Adi wet their lips and said, “What did they say?”

“Some nonsense excuse,” Cricket said. “They said the ghosts don’t know your name. That’s all they kept repeating at the end. As if that makes any sense at all.”

Adi went cold, and had to steady themselves on the nearby fence to keep their knees from giving out. “Oh,” they said. “I was afraid of that.”

“Adi?” Cricket said. “Don’t tell me it did mean something after all. What’s going on?”

Adi was silent for a long minute, struggling to put it into words. Cricket preened anxiously at their hair, tucking it behind their ear and letting the familiar touch of his beak soothe them into speech.

“Do you remember a few months ago,” they said at last, “when there was that disturbance, and I had to fix all the wards?”

“Oh, yes,” Cricket said. “Those noisy ghosts that ripped everything apart. Well, ghosts do that sometimes, don’t they? Nothing unusual about that.”

“Not these ones,” Adi said softly. “They were my great-grandparents.”

Cricket said nothing for a moment, then exploded in a startled burst, “You didn’t say anything about that! Start over, Adi. What’s going on?”

Adi sighed. “It was—supposed to be a lesson. For Saffron, you know. Dione had noticed she’d started showing signs of being a spirit worker, and she thought I’d be the perfect person to teach her. Saffron was so excited. It was her first practical demonstration, after I’d been going over for weeks to teach her about the theory and the protections and how to brew up the travel aids and everything else. And now she was finally going to get to see it.

“So she and Dione came over for the afternoon, and we made the teas together and set up the incense and laid out our offerings. And then I called up some of the family ghosts. It was—it was meant to be safe,” they said, their voice catching. “Familiar and easy and friendly—but it went wrong. And you saw what happened.”

Cricket had been the first of the crows to see it, in fact, his strong attachment to Adi alerting him to the surge of their magic even ahead of Junegrass, who was unusually sensitive to spirits. He had come shrieking in the window to find the living room in disarray, Saffron and Dione overwhelmed by the unexpected spiritual backlash and Adi straining to hold the veil closed against a pair of ghosts who were intent on tearing apart their wards and knocking over all the furniture. He had done—something, had lent Adi his strength in a way they still didn’t understand, until the rest of the crows had arrived to back them up and they had been able to snap the veil back into place. They had spent the next three weeks untangling and repairing their wards, and hadn’t contacted a single ghost since.

“I see,” Cricket said, after a long pause to digest that. “So what happened?”

Adi opened their mouth, and found they had no idea what to say. “Well—it was—” They stopped. “Do you remember how I used to be called something else?”

“Oh. Yes. That,” Cricket said distastefully. “Back when you were still pretending to be a man. Humans have such stupid ideas about that. As if people can’t change their type! It’s like you’ve all forgotten what Loki did.”

Adi paused. “Okay, we’ll talk about that later,” they said. “But that was why. It was the first time I’d spoken to my great-grandparents since I stopped pretending. They didn’t recognize me.”

There was a brief astonished silence, and then Cricket let out a groan. “The ghosts don’t know your name. They meant it literally. _Ravens!_ ”

“Exactly,” Adi said. “So now the ravens can’t let me through. There’s no one to call me from the other side. And I have no idea how my ancestors will react if I summon them here to ask for their help.” They swallowed, abruptly fighting back tears. “I don’t know what to do. Saffron’s trapped and I have no way to bring her home.”

Raucous’s voice came from unexpectedly close. “I told you,” she said. “You need to learn to stop looking for gates.”

* * *

Adi looked up. Raucous and the rest of the crows had gathered on the fence while they were absorbed in talking to Cricket, and now sat looking at them with a faintly smug tilt to their heads. Frowning, Adi met Raucous’s gaze and said, “What do you mean?”

“We’re crows,” she said. “We don’t go where we’re meant to go. We fly over fences and find our way through barriers. You’ve been talking to us for years, and most of my flock has known you all their lives,” she said, fixing them with a beady stare, “but you still haven’t learned to think like a crow.”

Adi stared. “You can get me to the underworld,” they said, their voice ringing hollow in their ears.

“No more gates,” Raucous said. “It’s time to break the rules.”

She launched herself into the air, the rest of the flock following her in a great rush of wings—even Cricket, though he paused briefly to brush his feathers against Adi’s cheek first. Their heart suddenly in their throat, Adi took off after them. They were breathless by the time they reached their front door, and it was only partly from the run.

Dione was on her feet when they tumbled back into the living room. “Did you talk to them? What did they say?” she said, casting around in search of ravens among the scattering of crows who were still resettling themselves on their perches.

“I did,” Adi said. “They won’t help. But it’s okay,” they added quickly, when it looked like Dione was about to deflate, “the crows will. Raucous said they can get me there.”

“The crows?” Jill said, getting to her feet and laying a hand on Dione’s arm. Her lovely face was twisted up with confusion. “But they don’t have anything to do with the underworld.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Adi said. “You said it yourself, they’re mischief-makers. Crows don’t follow the rules. They can get me there,” they repeated, and turned to the flock. “Raucous, what do I do?”

Neatly, Raucous bent her head to her wing and plucked out a loose feather. Adi took it; all around them, the rest of the crows were searching their pinions for their own offerings.

“Fetch cord, and your travelling herb,” Raucous said. “We’re going to teach you how to fly like a crow.”

“About time,” said Junegrass crisply, and that was that.

Dione and Jill watched as Adi and the crows sprang into a flurry of activity, bewildered skepticism and desperate hope warring for control of their expressions. Ignoring them, the crows settled along the back of the couch and on all the chairs, forming a tight circle around the middle of the room. Adi pushed the coffee table out of the way and sat on the floor, knotting a line of feathers down a length of cord. At their knee a cup of mugwort tea sat steeping.

“That should do it,” Cricket said, when they had knotted feathers along about a foot and a half of rope. “Cut it off and tie the ends.” Adi did as instructed and held it out for his inspection; bobbing his head, he took it in his beak and fluttered up to their shoulder, dropping it over their head like some extravagant collar.

“There,” he said. “That should let you pass as a crow, at least long enough for this to work.”

“Will it be enough?” Adi said.

Cricket clacked his beak in amusement. “Breaking the rules, remember? It doesn’t matter if it’s enough. You just have to do it.”

“Right,” Adi said, and turned to look at Saffron. Laid out on the couch as she was, her head was nearly level with theirs. She hadn’t stirred at all, and her small face looked so frail in its stillness. Adi felt their resolve harden. Cricket was right. The time for doubts was past.

Dione and Jill were hovering nearby. Jill still looked confused, but all the skepticism on Dione’s face had fallen away in her worry. Adi reached up, and she took their hand without a word, her strong fingers wrapping around their slender ones. Abruptly they remembered that it wasn’t just Saffron that Dione risked losing if this all went wrong: there was a chance that she’d be losing a friend as well.

That thought sat oddly on their skin. They’d spent so much of their time lately blaming themselves for Saffron’s disastrous lesson; it had been easy to forget that Dione had never asked them to pull away.

They squeezed her hand. “I’ll be back,” they said, forcing a confidence they didn’t feel. “I’ll bring your girl home.”

Dione bit her lip, then nodded. She released their hand and stepped back from the circle of crows. Adi glanced to Jill, meeting her eyes with what they hoped was a reassuring look.

“Time to go,” Cricket said.

Adi picked up the teacup, lifted the strainer from it, and swallowed it down. They closed their eyes against the dizzying rush of the mugwort, and felt Cricket settle into his accustomed place on their shoulder.

“Fly,” he said, his voice slow and distorted to Adi’s ears as the herb began its work. “I’ll be there. Time to spread your wings, fledgeling.”

Adi took a deep breath, and fell into the black.

* * *

When they opened their eyes, they were still sitting on their living room floor—but everything was different.

Dione and Jill and Saffron were gone. There was no sign of the crows, either, though Adi thought they could hear the flock calling just on the edge of hearing. Aside from that, the air was utterly still: not just silent, but empty, a great vast nothingness that pressed in on every side, impossible to fill. It almost felt like there should have been no air to breathe at all.

There was something wrong with the colour, too: it was too vivid and too dim all at once.

Adi stood and walked into the front hall, moving on an insistent instinct that they couldn’t find it in themselves to suppress. Light flooded in as they pulled the door open, eye-blinkingly bright and yet somehow almost washed out. More out of habit than necessity, they reached for the sunglasses they had hooked over the neck of their tunic, and in doing so brushed their fingers against the collar of crow feathers that still framed their throat. Abruptly the cries of the flock burst into full voice, and the sky was full of wheeling, calling crows.

There was a familiar cawing, and then Cricket swooped down out of the blue. Sunglasses forgotten, Adi lifted their arm to him; he landed with a self-satisfied flap and slightly more force than necessary.

“There you are,” he said. “I thought that went well.”

Adi huffed a brief laugh and transferred him to their shoulder, pointedly glancing around at the vibrantly dim, utterly empty copy of their street. “If you can call it that, I suppose. This place is creepy.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go to the underworld,” Cricket said cheerfully.

“True enough,” Adi said. “Now what?”

Cricket cocked his head, then nipped lightly at their ear. “I don’t know, fledgeling,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Adi thought for a moment, then said, “Down.”

“Down it is, then.”

They started off down the hill, and overhead the flock turned to follow.

As they walked further into this strange, silent realm, Adi couldn’t tell who was leading who, but that didn’t seem to matter: they knew, by that same tugging instinct that had led them out of their living room, that they were going in the right direction. They reached the bottom of the hill and kept going, crossing Richmond—seeming so entirely unreal without its usual steady stream of cars—and turning left towards the high-rise just down the block. All the while the crows kept pace with them, darting ahead and circling back, their ongoing chatter a tiny, defiant bit of noise against the void.

They reached the high-rise. Adi turned into the driveway, not entirely sure where they were going but knowing it was right. A wrought-iron fence bordered the parking lot and enclosed a small community garden; they swung open the door and followed the pathway to the edge of the property, where a battered old gate opened onto a trail through a copse of trees. Adi stepped out onto it, looking first one way and then the other, then turned westward. The trees thinned out around them, then cut away entirely, and then as forest turned into field the trail met up with a paved bike path.

The path carved a straight line across the field, passing through a double underpass beneath the eerily empty Parkway, and carried on—right to the edge of the river.

“Oh, yes,” Cricket muttered, as Adi walked through the first underpass. “Nothing ominous about that.”

“You’re the one who wanted me to decide where to go,” Adi said mildly.

“Not if it’s going to get me wet,” said Cricket.

“Oh, hush,” Adi said. They found themselves picking up their pace a bit: something in the river was calling to them.

Something in the river, perhaps, wanted to be found.

They didn’t hesitate when they reached the end of the path, just kept going right over the grassy bank and down the rocky shore. The water sat there, as unnaturally still as everything else in this silent landscape, though when Adi looked at it out of the corners of their eyes they could see evidence of a swift-moving current. Raucous, Junegrass, and all the rest continued to wheel overhead, straying farther and farther out over the river. On Adi’s shoulder, Cricket had yet to cease his muttering.

“Well,” Adi said, “nothing for it, I guess.” And they stepped into the river.

The water fled before their feet.

Astonished, Adi could only stare for a moment. The river retreated by about a foot, then stopped, bunching itself up into a rippling little wall. For an absurd moment Adi expected it to collapse back down and soak their shoes—but they were clearly far beyond the normal laws of physics. Hesitantly, they took another step.

Once more, the water retreated.

“Now, how about that,” Cricket said.

“Down,” Adi said, and started to walk.

The path they cleared held steady, and soon they were walking between walls of water higher than their head, carefully picking their way over the slippery rocks and soft mud of the riverbed. Under this unreal, dim-bright sky, it was impossible to tell how long they had been walking, and the glint of light playing through gently undulating walls of water threw off even their roughest estimate. Gradually Adi relaxed into not knowing. The Ottawa River was as wide as a lake in places. They could be walking a long time before they reached the other side.

But the other side, it seemed, was not their destination. As the water drew back before them it uncovered a yawning black hole that disappeared into the depths beneath the river. Adi came up next to it and stopped, gazing silently into that impassable dark. On their shoulder, Cricket let out a warbling caw.

“Crows aren’t meant to go under the ground,” he moaned. “Oh, I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

“You don’t have to come, Cricket,” Adi said gently. “You’ve gotten me farther than I ever could have expected already.”

Cricket hopped back and forth nervously, then shook himself. “No. I’m sticking with you, Adi. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Despite themselves Adi smiled, lifting their hand to scratch the ruff of his throat. “Thank you,” they said, then turned their head up to face the sky. “What about the rest of the flock?”

“Hm,” Cricket said, then cawed loudly.

A moment later Raucous swept down, landing on a protruding jut of rock that stuck up from the edge of the hole. She walked up to the rim, peering over it, then cocked an eye at Adi. “You’re going down there, I expect.”

“I’m afraid so,” Adi said. “The flock won’t follow, will they?”

Raucous hunched her shoulders in an avian shrug. “No,” she said. “Crows don’t belong below the earth. If you go that way, you’ll have to go alone.”

“Not alone,” Cricket said, indignant. “I’m going with them.”

Raucous rolled her eyes. “Well, yes,” she said. “Obviously you are. But the flock won’t. You’ll only be able to draw on what Cricket can give you.”

“It’s okay,” Adi said. “You’ve done more than enough. Thank you, Raucous. Tell the flock I appreciate it.”

The flock leader tapped her beak at this un-crowlike display of sentimentality, but ruffled her feathers in appreciation. “We’ll keep an eye on you from the other side of the veil,” she said. “Come back home safe, fledgeling. I’ll be very cross if we taught you to fly for nothing.”

“I will,” Adi said. “I’ll see you soon.”

With a flurry of wingbeats, Raucous took off. There was a cacophony of overlapping calls from the flock, and then the noise ceased. Adi didn’t look up: they knew the crows had gone. It was just them and Cricket, facing down the dark all alone.

“Let’s get this over with,” Cricket said. His voice was unhappy, but his beak in Adi’s hair was as gentle as ever.

Not trusting themselves to reply, Adi just nodded. They sat at the edge of the hole, bracing their feet as well as they could against the tumble of rock, and began their descent.

* * *

If it had been impossible to judge time in the river, it was a hopeless cause beneath the ground. The blackness was absolute. Adi slid and scrambled down into the hole, one hand raised to protect Cricket as well as they could, the other braced against the slippery stone in an attempt to control their descent. At last the rocky slope came to an end; cautiously they got to their feet, keeping one hand against the wall of the cave.

“Are you alright?” they said. Their voice echoed strangely in this space beneath the river.

“No, but I’m not hurt,” Cricket said, his familiar soft weight huddled close against Adi’s neck. “You?”

“A bit sore, but I’ll be fine,” Adi said. In vain they squinted into the darkness. “I think we need to keep going.”

“Well, that one’s on you, mammal,” Cricket said. “I’m certainly not flying in this.”

Adi turned, following that insistent tugging that sat in the base of their ribcage—and in the distance, something glimmered. “Did you see that?”

“Did I see what?” Cricket said, sounding faintly peeved. “I’m a crow, Adi. My night vision is terrible.”

“There it is again!” Adi said. It was a faint, flickering blue glow, just a tiny speck of light in the otherwise impenetrable darkness—but it was something. More than that: Adi knew in their heart that it was the _right_ thing. And so with only a breath of trepidation they let their hand fall away from the wall and started forwards.

The blue glow grew as they moved, stabilizing into something like the glimmer of sunlight through water. Soon it began to light up the cave around them, taking the blackness to darkness and finally to mere dimness. Adi continued along the tunnel while Cricket shifted nervously on their shoulder, until at last the source of the glow came into focus.

It was a great wall of rippling ice, ancient and primal and slick with meltwater. And on the other side—

Sunlight.

Adi stepped up to it, peering into it in wonder. They could almost see through it, but it was so thick…

“How is this here?” they said. “It’s the middle of summer.”

Unexpectedly, Cricket made a throaty noise of amusement, tapping his beak merrily. “Do you think any of this is real, fledgeling?” he said. “Do you think there’s even a cave under the river at all? You’re not real, remember? You’re sitting on the floor in your living room.”

Adi flushed. “Right,” they said. They had _known_ that—it was an amateur mistake to make. But it had been so long since they had done any spirit work at all…

They flattened their hand against the ice. “How do we get in?”

“Ah. Well,” Cricket said, clambering down their arm to peer at the ice. “That, I can handle. Out of the way,” he added, and took off with a sudden flapping of wings. Adi obeyed, snatching their hand away and stepping back. Cricket cawed and started flying in loops, tightening his circle with every turn. And then, just when it looked like he couldn’t bank any tighter, he shot forward with another harsh cry, vanishing through the ice without a trace.

“Cricket!” Adi cried.

There was no response.

Hesitantly, Adi took a step forward, then another. Still nothing happened. The ice sat there, towering far overhead, as thick and impenetrable as before. There was no sign of Cricket, no speck of moving black in the light Adi could see beyond the wall. Not knowing what else to do, they lifted their hands to the frozen barrier.

Like shards of liquid glass, the ice shattered at their touch.

Adi was left blinking in a rush of bright sunlight. They were standing at the edge of a field of long grasses, dotted with poppies and waving gently in an imperceptible breeze. Ahead they thought they could make out the forms of moving people, the line of a road, even the sketchy outline of buildings, but it was so hard to get their eyes to focus.

With a flutter of wings Cricket landed on their shoulder. “There you are,” he said. “Well, we made it to the underworld.”

Adi raised their hand to stroke his wing without looking away from the vista before them. “I’ve never seen it this clearly before,” they said.

“I could have done without it, personally,” Cricket said, settling his feathers with a decisive shake.

“I know,” Adi said. “I’m glad you came anyway. Now let’s find Saffron.”

They started walking, and Cricket took off again, swooping ahead in searching loops. Before them, the misty figures began to solidify, until Adi could make out individual features—a hand here, a face there, the curve of a spine or the fall of a coat, always just the other side of familiar. Soon they were walking among ghosts, the insubstantial shapes of people reaching for them as they passed or calling out in an uncounted multiplicity of languages. Adi brushed their hands away and slid past them, keeping their eyes on Cricket as they carried on.

Soon the landscape around them began to solidify as well, the shapes of buildings filling themselves in until abruptly Adi found themselves walking on the streets of downtown Ottawa. But they were misty at the edges, the gaps filled in with approximations, stores that had closed a decade ago sitting alongside buildings that were only finished last year.

Cricket swooped down, landing on a nearby trash bin. “What’s going on?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Adi said. The shops and restaurants had given way to trees and old houses, and just ahead they could make out the outline of a city park. “I used to live on this street.”

“Huh,” Cricket said. “That’s certainly something.” He took off again, calling out, “Keep going straight. I think Saffron is just ahead.”

Adi kept walking, stepping onto the grass that marked the edge of the park. It twisted as they advanced, every step taking it further from what they remembered until they were standing in the yard of an elementary school. Where before the space around them had felt more than halfway to familiar, they now had the sense of being a stranger in a foreign country.

“Do you recognize this?” Cricket called.

“No,” Adi said. “It must be something from Saffron’s memory.”

Cricket bawled an affirmative, then swooped off again. “We’re getting close.”

Adi turned the corner, coming around the side of the building to find a playground, sized for young children and populated by half-formed ghosts. Abruptly the tugging in their ribcage ceased, and they almost stumbled: they hadn’t realized how accustomed to it they’d become.

A small, golden-haired figure was sitting at the bottom of the slide, glumly ignoring the shapes of the ghosts passing through her and clambering over her.

“Saffron,” Adi called.

Saffron’s head shot up and she jolted from her seat. “Adi? Adi, oh my god—” she cried, and then she was across the playground and crashing into them, her arms wrapping tight around their ribs. “You’re real, you’re real, oh my god, I’ve been so scared, I don’t know where I am or how to get home or what’s going on—”

“It’s okay! Saffron, it’s okay, breathe,” Adi said, settling their arms around her shoulders and holding her close. “Breathe, sweetie. I’m here. I’m gonna get you home, okay?”

“Thank god,” Saffron said fervently, then buried her face in their chest and didn’t say anything for a long time.

Cricket landed on Adi’s shoulder. “Is the hatchling hurt?”

“She’s fine, I think,” Adi said. “Just shaken.”

“Who are you talking to?” Saffron said, her voice muffled into Adi’s shirt. She lifted her head. “Oh, one of the crows.” She peered at Cricket, then said, “Which one is that?”

“This is Cricket,” Adi said. “He’s been very helpful in finding you.”

Cricket puffed up, pleased.

“How _did_ you find me?” Saffron said. “Do you know where we are?”

Adi hesitated. “I’m not sure I should say just yet,” they said. “Your mom sort of freaked out when I told her.”

“Oh, god, my mom,” Saffron groaned. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Adi assured her. “Worried about you, of course. But I’m going to take you home and everything will be alright.”

Saffron bit her lip. “It’s the underworld, isn’t it?” she said in a small voice. “I think they’re ghosts.”

There was a pause, both Adi and Cricket contemplating the girl, and then Cricket said, “Smart hatchling.”

“She is,” Adi said. “Yes, Saffron, they’re ghosts. But they’re not going to hurt you. This place seems to work on memory—I don’t think they can even talk to you properly if they’re not someone you know.”

Saffron nodded, then slipped her hand into Adi’s. “Let’s go, please.”

“Yes, let’s,” Adi said. “Cricket, lead the way?”

Saffron kept her hand in Adi’s as they started making their way back through the changing landscape. They walked through parks and familiar streets, schools and shopping malls, hiking trails and boutique shops and public libraries that seemed to go on forever. Some of them were places Adi knew; others were a mystery. All around them ghosts called out in garbled words and unknown voices, their hands slipping insubstantially past them. Always ahead of them Cricket was a fixed point, guiding them home by some crowish instinct that he neither could nor would have explained.

And then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t.

* * *

One moment, Adi and Saffron were stepping through an empty doorway, as they had a dozen times already; the next, the world had blurred, twisting so fast into its new shape that Adi could actually see it moving. When it resettled, there was no sign of Cricket. Adi cast around, still more surprised than panicked, and then realized something much worse: there was no sign of Saffron, either.

“Oh, no,” they said. “Saffron? Where are you? Cricket? Saffron?!”

A distant voice, gravelly with age, called out, “There’s no need to shout. I’m in the kitchen!”

Adi’s heart began to pound in their throat. They knew that voice. And, as they started down the hall, they realized they knew where they were as well. This was their childhood home.

Their father was standing at the counter when they walked into the kitchen, chopping tomatoes while onions fried in the pan next to him. It was so familiar a sight that Adi stopped dead, tears already prickling in their eyes.

“Dad,” they said.

Daniel looked up as they came in, setting the knife down with a smile and turning to open his arms. “Come here, kiddo.”

They had their arms around him before they could stop to think. He folded them into his embrace, warm and strong, and Adi bit back a sob. It had been almost two years.

“I missed you so much,” they said.

“I missed you too,” he said, drawing back to look them in the eye. “We haven’t talked in a few months.”

Adi scrubbed at their face. “Sorry,” they said. “Things have been… weird. I had to stop doing spirit work for a while.”

“Had to stop—” he began, fingers tightening on their shoulders for a moment before he consciously relaxed. “That sounds serious, son. Want to talk about it?”

Adi swallowed around a sudden lump in their throat. “That—that’s the thing, dad,” they said. Their voice was shaking. “I’m not your son.”

His face darkened at that. “Not my—don’t be ridiculous! You may have changed your hair and clothes but do you really think I wouldn’t recognize my own kid? You’re—”

“No,” Adi interrupted, lifting one hand to their shoulder to grip his hand. “Your child, yes. I’ll always be your kid. But I’m not your son.”

For a long moment he stared at them, uncomprehending, and then Adi saw the understanding wash through him. “I… oh,” he said, his expression unexpectedly vulnerable. “I—I see. My daughter?”

Adi shook their head, the tears beginning to trickle from their eyes. “Your child. Just your child. No gender involved.”

“Oh,” he repeated, then fell silent for a moment. “I didn’t know.”

“No, I know,” Adi said. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry. I just… never knew what to say.” They sighed, dropping their gaze, and fought not to squirm under his scrutiny. “And then—then you died, and I realized—I didn’t want to live my life never knowing what it was like to—to be me. And I thought… I wished I’d said something before you’d gone.”

The kitchen was silent for a moment but for the sizzling of the onions, as Adi blinked away tears and Daniel simply stood there, trying to find his voice. At last he cleared his throat awkwardly and said, “Well… I like what you’ve done with your hair.”

That surprised Adi into a wet laugh. “Thanks,” they said, blotting their eyes with the side of their hand.

Their father touched his knuckles to their chin. “I’ll always love you, kiddo.”

“Thanks, dad,” Adi said softly. “I love you too.”

They were quiet for a moment while Adi composed themselves, and then Daniel said, “So what does this have to do with you stopping spirit work?”

Quite suddenly Adi found they didn’t know what to say. They opened their mouth, then closed it again, then bit their lip, worrying at a patch of rough skin. They had managed to tell Cricket, hadn’t they? Why was this so different?

“Easy, kiddo,” Daniel said. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

“Adi,” they said. “My name is Adi.”

Their father let out a slow exhale. “You changed your name,” he said. Adi nodded. He squeezed their shoulders. “Okay, Adi. Tell me what happened.”

And so—in halting sentences, their gaze focused anywhere but their father’s face—they told the story of the summons that had gone wrong. Daniel didn’t interrupt; he simply listened, with a grave solemnity and a grounding touch on Adi’s shoulders. And when they finished, he still said nothing, considering their problem with all the care it was due—just as he always had.

For all that Adi had known to expect it, they were still somehow relieved. It was nice to see the proof that there were some things even death couldn’t change.

“You know,” he said finally, “it’s a shame we don’t have a way to handle these sorts of things through the veil.” At Adi’s confused look, he simply shrugged and said, “It makes sense, I suppose, that being called up by an unfamiliar name might confuse a spirit or make them hostile, but it’s not as though you had any other way to reintroduce yourself.”

Adi hesitated, then blurted, “So you don’t think it’s my fault?”

“What?” Daniel said. “No, of course not. You couldn’t very well have called them using your old name. If you’d already set it aside then it probably wouldn’t even have worked at all.”

Without warning Adi found themselves blinking back tears again. “Oh,” they said dumbly. “I thought… it must have been me. That I’d been careless.”

“Oh, kiddo,” their father said, and folded them into a hug again. “You didn’t hurt your friends. It was all just a stupid misunderstanding. And your great-grandparents will be hearing about it from me, trust me.”

His tone, that weary familial exasperation, was so unexpectedly mundane that Adi couldn’t help but start to laugh. Then all the stress of their day caught up with them—the worry over Saffron and Dione, facing their fear of doing spirit work again, the conversation with the ravens, the journey into the underworld itself—and soon they were muffling hysterics into their father’s shoulder, gasping for breath and crying with it. Daniel suffered through it with amused good grace, rubbing their back soothingly and letting them wear themselves out.

At last Adi calmed and drew back, wiping their face with a faintly embarrassed smile. “Sorry,” they said. “It’s been a really long day.”

“I can see that,” their father said. “What are you doing in the underworld, anyway?”

“My friend’s daughter got stuck here,” Adi said, then groaned. “She was with me until I walked in here. Oh, I hope she’s still with Cricket.”

“Cricket?” Daniel said. “Your crow familiar?”

“He’s not my familiar,” Adi said automatically, then paused to actually consider it. “He might be my familiar. But we haven’t formalized anything yet, so don’t say that where he can hear you.”

“Got it,” Daniel said with a grin. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much. Crows are good at getting around in places they’re not meant to be.”

“Don’t I know it,” Adi muttered. “I should find them.”

“Yes, you should. And then get home. Safely, you hear?”

“Yes, dad,” Adi said. “It was good to see you. I won’t let it go so long next time, now that I know…”

They trailed off, and their father smiled. “Yes. And I’ll talk to the family. Next time you summon an ancestor they’ll know who you are.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“And call your mother!” he added, as they started making their way towards the backdoor. “Time you told the living, too.”

“Love you,” Adi called, unlocking the sliding glass door and pulling it open.

“Love you too, kiddo,” Daniel said. “Now go home.”

* * *

Adi stepped out the door—and into their own backyard.

They stopped, staring in astonishment at their garden. It was exactly as they had left it earlier that afternoon, if considerably less full of crows than it usually was. In fact, there was only one crow, and he was perched on a low-hanging tree branch, right beside a small golden-haired figure.

“Oh, thank god,” Adi said.

Saffron shot to her feet. “Adi! What happened? You disappeared!” she yelled, crossing the yard and pounding up the steps to the back deck in record time.

“I know. Sorry about that,” Adi said. “Apparently I had some family business to take care of. But it’s all sorted now.”

“Good,” Cricket squawked, swooping up and landing lightly on Adi’s shoulder. “I was getting tired of waiting around, fledgeling.”

“You were worried,” Adi said fondly. “Don’t try to pull one over on me, Cricket.”

“Hmph,” Cricket said, and ruffled his feathers in satisfaction.

“I wish I could understand him,” Saffron said wistfully. “That sure would have made things easier for the last half hour.”

“You could learn,” Adi said, holding out their hand to her. Saffron took it, and they turned back towards the house. Sure enough, their childhood home had disappeared, to be replaced with their own little Woodpark house. “But for now, let’s get you back to your mother.”

“Please,” Saffron said fervently.

Adi opened the door and they walked inside, Saffron clinging tightly to their hand. They led her down the hallway into the kitchen, and from there into the living room. There was still no sign of Dione and Jill in this strangely lit version of their home, but a copy of Saffron—still, silent, unmoving—had appeared on the couch.

The Saffron beside them let out a cry and tore her hand from theirs, and then she was racing towards herself—and the world dissolved into shimmering echoes.

Adi opened their eyes.

They were sitting on the floor of their living room, surrounded by a circle of crows. A flood of ambient sound pressed down on them, filling the void that they had at some point stopped noticing. For a moment something the colours in their vision looked twisted and strange, and then they realized that they were simply—real.

“Adi?” came Dione’s voice, and then, “Saffron!”

“Welcome back,” Raucous said. “You did well.”

On the couch behind them, Saffron had sat up, the protection-spelled blanket pooling in her lap. She and Dione were clinging to each other, both of them crying; Jill was nearby, looking pretty teary as well. As Adi unbent their stiff limbs, she looked up, her lovely face bright with joy and relief. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m so glad you made it home.”

Adi felt a tear trickle down their cheek, and they lifted a hand to their shoulder where Cricket still sat, taking comfort in the softness of his feathers. “Me too,” they said. “It’s good to be back.”

It was some time before Dione was coherent again, or ready to let Saffron go even for a moment. She thanked Adi effusively, wrapping them up in a bone-cracking hug that once again startled Cricket from their shoulder. They managed to extract themselves by promising a cedar tea, which would help ground them and Saffron, and settle everyone’s nerves. Between that, and the crows swooping around in a celebratory ruckus, and the fact that Saffron had apparently glued herself to her mother’s side, it was a long time before anyone started thinking about getting ready to go home.

It was Jill who saved them. Just when Adi was on the point of overstimulation, she started gathering up her things and chivvying Dione and Saffron towards the door. Adi flashed her a grateful smile as Saffron ducked into the bathroom to change out of her pyjamas and Dione pulled on her shoes. Jill returned it, and went up on her tiptoes to kiss them lightly on the cheek.

“I’ll be by tomorrow afternoon to check on you,” she said.

Adi sighed. “You’re a lifesaver, Jill.”

Jill patted their arm. “Get some rest, Adi,” she said, and slipped out the door to start the car.

Dione was waiting, her warm eyes intent on Adi. “I really can’t explain how much this means to me,” she said.

“I know,” Adi said. “I love her too, Dione. And don’t worry about it. I owed you.” They smiled faintly. “It helped me sort out something important, too.”

“If you’re sure,” Dione said.

“I’m sure,” Adi said. “I’m just glad Saffron’s safe.” They took a deep breath, hesitating, and then said, “I can start giving her lessons again, if you want. She’ll probably need them.”

Dione considered them for a long moment, and then she smiled as well. “I think she’d like that.”

“Take your time,” Adi said. “Think about it.”

“We will,” Dione said. The bathroom door opened, and her gaze shifted down the hall, her eyes lighting up. “Ready to go, baby?”

Saffron, now dressed in jean shorts and a pink and orange tank top, pattered down the hall to the door. “Yeah,” she said. She turned her face up to Adi, her bright smile mingled with the same exhaustion they could feel creeping over them. “Thanks again. I’ll see you soon, right?”

Adi touched her hair fondly, then bent to press a kiss to her crown. “I’ll see you soon.”

Dione and Saffron walked out the front door, and Adi shut it behind them, turning the lock with something like relief. The house was blessedly quiet: most of the crows had made their way out by the kitchen window, which Adi had thrown open while they were making tea. Only Raucous and Cricket were left, sitting on the windowsill engaged in some sort of mysterious crow conference that they abruptly broke off when Adi drew near.

“So, you’ve learned to fly,” Raucous said. “This is going to be fun.”

“Am I supposed to have any idea what that means?” Adi said, as they began stacking mugs in the dishwasher.

“Of course not,” Raucous said scornfully. “You’re not a crow. You’re still wearing our feathers, by the way. You should take them off, you look ridiculous.” And then she took flight, swooping off into the fading afternoon sky.

“She’s proud of you,” Cricket said. “So am I. I suppose we’re going to have to stop calling you a fledgeling soon.”

“Suppose so,” Adi said. “Cricket, are you my familiar?”

“Adi!” Cricket said. “You can’t just say things like that!” And then he followed Raucous in a fluster of wingbeats—but Adi knew him well enough to tell when he was covering up delight.

“We’ll figure something out,” they said with a small smile. Then they turned away from the window. There was still one more thing they had to do.

Their phone was sitting on the island countertop. They picked it up now, pausing for only the briefest moment before they punched in their mother’s number, driven more by muscle memory than any awareness of the numbers themselves. They lifted it to their ear as it started to ring, waiting to hear the well-known sound of their mother’s voice greeting them on the other end of the line.

“Hi, mom. It’s me,” they said when she answered, and summoned up their nerve. “Is this a good time to talk?”


End file.
